Free Republic

Can you imagine the Dow Jones Industrial Average at, say, 3000? Can you visualize inflation and interests in double digits? And per capita income maybe two-thirds of what it is now? It's not so difficult to see those things in your mind's eye -- provided you can also visualize the American people re-electing the 39th president, Jimmy Carter. Instead, 25 years ago today, on November 4, 1980, the voters in 44 states chose Ronald Reagan. So this day, like any happy anniversary, is worth celebrating. But in addition, we should remember that while Reagan demonstrated the importance of optimism, another...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A record amount of tax revenue flowed into federal coffers in July, helping to keep the government on track to significantly lower the budget deficit this year. The Treasury Department reported Wednesday that revenue collections jumped 5.7 percent last month from a year ago, pushing total receipts to $142.09 billion, the largest amount ever collected by the federal government in the month of July. The Bush administration last month significantly lowered its estimate for this year's budget deficit - to $332.65 billion, down 22 percent from its February estimate that the deficit this year would total $427...

In 1970, Ohio had one of the lowest tax burdens in the Union--it now has one of the highest. As of 2005, the state's tax burden, as estimated by the Tax Foundation, is 35.8% higher than it was in 1970, the largest increase in the nation over this period. The next largest, 26.5% in Arkansas, was far smaller, and the average increase in the U.S. tax burden was just 3.1%. Over the past decade alone, Ohio's state and local government direct spending per $1,000 of personal income has risen 19.6%, by far the highest such spending growth in the region...

TAX CUTS--especially the supply-side tax cuts of May 2003--were the controversial center of the Bush administration's first-term economic policy. Most Democrats opposed most of the tax rate reductions. John Kerry promised to repeal many of them if elected president. The president, and Republicans running for the Senate and House, promised to make them permanent. (For reasons having to do with artificial out-year budget calculations, most of the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire over the next few years.)Bush won and Kerry lost. Republicans increased their margins in Congress. So a bill to make the tax cuts permanent should be...

As legend has it the famous Laffer Curve was first drawn by economist Arthur Laffer in 1974 on a cocktail napkin during a small dinner meeting... attended by the late Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley and such high-powered policy makers as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. The Laffer Curve helped launch the Reaganomics Revolution here at home and a frenzy of tax rate cutting around the globe.... The theory is really one of the simplest concepts in economics. Yet its logic continues to elude the class-warfare lobby whose disbelief is unburdened by the multiple real-life examples which validate its...

When "W" ran for president in 2000, I voted for him but not enthusiastically. I had voted for Bill Clinton in the prior two presidential elections, but with Al Gore as the Democratic candidate in 2000 the choice was easy for me even if I wasn't all that excited about George Bush. I am now flabbergasted by the performance of Bush 43. George W. Bush could well turn out to be the best president in recent history. His inaugural address and his State of the Union speech were as good as any I've ever heard. He has also shown unbelievable...

An article titled "Laffering all the Way to the Bank" appeared in the National Review Online on April 30, 2004. It can be found online at http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_buzzcharts/buzzcharts200404300829.asp. It contains a chart showing that federal tax receipts increased from $825 billion in the first half of fiscal year 2003 to $850 billion in the first half of fiscal year 2004. Following are the final two paragraphs of the article: President Bush’s most recent tax cut proves that tax rates were, in fact, too high. This is demonstrated through the simple fact that the first half of fiscal year 2004 is showing...

Laffer Lines Be discerning when reading explanations of the supply-side’s landmark curve. By Thomas E. Nugent Ever since Time magazine selected supply-side economist Arthur Laffer as one of the hundred greatest minds of the 20th century, economists, authors, and media commentators have attempted to define supply-side economics and the Laffer curve. As with any second-hand explanation of an “idea,” there are often distortions and misunderstandings. So, to be sure the record is straight on the origin and meaning of the Laffer curve, here’s the inside scoop. At a dinner in 1974, Dr. Arthur Laffer met with Donald Rumsfeld, the current...

Some of you may share the mistaken belief that the Laffer Curve, named for Dr. Arthur Laffer, was tested and found wanting during the Reagan Administration. Nothing could be farther from the truth. There are two possible causes for your error. The first is that you may simply not know what the Laffer Curve is. This, combined with a natural tendency to agree with the "conventional wisdom," may lead you to just mindlessly nod your head in agreement every time you hear some T.V. network reporter blithely dismiss the "discredited Laffer Curve." The second possible cause for your error may...

January 09, 2004, 9:36 a.m. Tax rates were cut, but government's tax receipts are rising. By Jerry Bowyer A cornerstone of supply-side economic principles is that cuts in marginal tax rates can, at times, actually lead to an overall increase in governmental tax revenues. The idea is best demonstrated through a thought experiment: Would you bother to work if the government took, say, 125 percent of your profit? That is, would you still work if the government took every dollar you made plus a quarter from your personal savings for each of those dollars? Of course not. In such...

There is a long and tragic tradition that runs through American politics in which politicians spend themselves into a fiscal crisis during good economic times and then raise taxes to bail themselves out when a recession hits and revenues plummet. This is precisely what's going on today in Alabama and California. In both states between 1997 and 2000, state spending increased more than three times faster than the combined rate of inflation and population growth. Not only does government continuously get bigger and more intrusive, politicians on the left forever manipulate the tax system as a mechanism of income redistribution...

Memo To: Website Fans, Browsers Clients From: Jude Wanniski Re: Part I Today I’m posting the first of a two-part brief history of the Supply-Side Revolution, written by a distinguished Los Angeles attorney, Wayne Jett, a 60-year-old man I’ve never met. He clearly has gone to a great deal of trouble to assemble this account, which he first sent to Professor Robert Mundell of Columbia University – Mundell being the prime mover in reviving classical theory. When Mundell gave it his seal of approval, Mr. Jett sent it to me, wondering if I could suggest a place where it might...

DO TAX CUTS pay for themselves? That's been the hot debate of American political economy for the better part of three decades. But it ended last week -- with a whimper. The great argument got its start in 1974, when a White House chief of staff named Donald Rumsfeld sent his deputy, Richard Cheney, to have lunch with an ebullient young economist named Art Laffer and his journalistic sidekick, Jude Wanniski. According to local lore, Mr. Laffer sketched a curve on a cocktail napkin suggesting that a cut in income taxes could provide such a spark to the economy that...

<p>We don't usually tout Russia as a model of economic enlightenment. But with the tax-cutting debate in full cry here in Amerika, it's a good time to review Russia's recent tax revolution. We hope President Putin's "very frank" discussions with President Bush last Friday included talk of tax reform.</p>